Manhattan in Reverse [Hardcover]

 

 

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I've been a Peter F Hamilton fan for a long time, in fact the reason I read sci-fi nowadays is because of Pandora's Star. The last collection of short stories by Peter F Hamilton was A Second Chance at Eden released way back in the late 90's, but it was a collection of Confederation exclusive stories based on his Night's Dawn universe. On hearing about this new collection I was rather excited, hoping to see all of the stories that he's written since then. Aside from one glaring omission this is a pretty decent collection and worthy of a place on the shelf of any Hamilton fan.

Watching Trees Grow
Starting off with the longest offering in the collection, Watching Trees Grow was initially published back in 2000 by PS Publishing as a limited edition, though it was later re-published in the Futures anthology from Gollancz.

As an alternate history tale, this story looks at a world where the Roman Empire never fell and the grand families continued to prosper. With the planet in a golden age of sorts it has allowed technology to advance quicker than in our world, with the starting point of the story in the early 1800's comparable to the mid to late 19th century. By selective breeding in the `Sport of Emperors', life spans of the grand families are now measured in centuries rather than decades of the Shorts.

At its heart Watching Trees Grow is the story of Edward Bucahanan Raleigh's continued investigation into the death of one of his family members at university. Told through his eyes from the night of the murder in 1832 through to the transcendence of the human race to pure energy, Watching Trees Grow is an interesting look at big events during that world's future, all wrapped around the one question: who killed Justin Ascham Raleigh?

Footvote
Footvote is another story originally published by PS Publishing, this one in their first issue of Postscripts, a long-running magazine/anthology. Pan Macmillan are also releasing this one separately as an electronic short story.

Anyway, Footvote is a simple story based on the premise that one man has opened a wormhole to a new planet, New Suffolk, and nobody knows how he's done it. He's set specific conditions on who can travel through the wormhole and settle this new world (these are amusing little tidbits throughout the story), but has given a strict time-frame of two years before he will close the wormhole forever. Footvote focuses on one family, Janette and her two children on the one hand and her ex-husband Colin and his new girlfriend on the other, each with opposing views to the wormhole and its creator.

It's a nice little story, perhaps one of my favourites in the collection due to its subject matter, and its nice to see something set in the near-future. The world Peter has created here could be the basis for an expansion into a full novel, or maybe another short story - I for one would like to see more of New Suffolk and how it's progressed...

If At First...
Here's a story that first saw the light of day in one of the anthologies from Solaris a few years back. It's a short one about a detective that finds himself chasing a suspect into a time machine that then sends his consciousness back to his 1968 body. It's an interesting tale, amusing in parts and easy to read with an ending nicely suited to the tale.

The Forever Kitten
Perhaps unbelievably, this tale is a mere thousand words that once again uses the subject matter of immortality/extended lifespans. Peter seems to have a thing for this and Forever Kitten is an interesting, though short, take that I think is rather successful given its limited word count.

Blessed by an Angel
This is the first of the three Commonwealth stories in this collection, and while the other two are Paula Myo stories, this one is a prequel of sorts to the Void trilogy. Looking at the events surrounding the conception of Inigo, one of the more central characters in the Void series, this introduces the `angel' of the title, a higher human that can use biononics to change gender from female to male while using this technology to allow the conception of a biononic child.

There's a good bit of detail here and anyone that has read the Void books will fully grasp all the details, though I'm not sure the same can be said if you're new to the universe. I like it as it adds depth to the character and essentially gives a more detailed account of what is only hinted at in the early Void books.

The Demon Trap
The Demon Trap was previously published in the Galactic Empires anthology, but that had limited release and not many would have read it before now. It's nice that it's finally got a wider readership as it is one of the best shorts Peter has written.

The Demon Trap sits nicely between Misspent Youth and Pandora's Star and features Paula Myo, the genetically engineered detective we've all come to know (if you've read the Commonwealth books that is!). With her birth planet the much-hated Huxley's Haven, a planet in the Commonwealth where each person is genetically designed prior to birth to do the job they are allocated, she is an investigator that cannot leave a case until it has finally been solved and justice delivered.

The story itself follows the events of one of the Commonwealth planets, Merioneth, wanting independence and all connections to the Commonwealth closed. This starts off with a terrorist group targeting and killing young dynasty family members in order to pressure CST into closing the wormhole connection. Suffice to say, they are successful in getting the Commonwealth to agree a date that does exactly this. The story goes from there, Paula determined to unravel the mystery behind the attacker and terrorist group.

There is not a lot to dislike in The Demon Trap. Paula is an excellent character and carries the story with ease. There are, however, plenty of references to Peter's previous works (particularly Misspent Youth) and knowing these little details will certainly add to the enjoyment. I can't see any problems for those that haven't read the Commonwealth novels as The Demon Trap is a nice little murder-mystery with added political dealings. One of the best in the collection for sure.

Manhattan in Reverse
The reason I was looking forward to this collection so much: a new story! Manhattan in Reverse is another Paula Myo story that takes place shortly after the end of the Starflyer War depicted in Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained. You don't need to have read those books to enjoy this story as it is completely stand alone with only a few references to the novels.

After convicting a war hero for crimes committed in his youth, Paula Myo needs something that will take her away from the attention she's getting, and Wilson Kime has just the ticket. On a relatively new colony world one of the non-sentient species is kicking up some trouble for the human inhabitants, trouble that could lead to genocide if something isn't done soon. Problem solving is what Paula is good at, and with the help of xeno-biologist Bernadino Paganuzzi that's exactly what she has to do.

I liked this story quite a bit, it was interesting and had a nice finish, but I wasn't really sure why Paula was the main character. Still, I did like the exploration of the Onid, why they were attacking the colonists and just how they could see what they really shouldn't be able to. It's a quick read that finishes nicely - not much more you can ask for!

Conclusion
Manhattan in Reverse does exactly what it says on the tin: it collects Hamilton's short stories in one book for those that have not tracked them down by other means. A new story is there for the fans who need a reason to buy it, and it is worth it.

The glaring omission I mentioned earlier is The Suspect Genome, the BSFA award-winning short story the features Greg Mandel, the psychic detective from Peter's early novels. To me it's one of the best short stories Peter has written and should have been included regardless of how it's aged since publication, and especially because it's very hard to track down. It was a poor decision to leave it out.

However, with stories like Watching Trees Grow, The Demon Trap and Manhattan in Reverse, Peter once again shows why he is regarded as one of the best science fiction writers of the past decade and how, when he puts his mind to it, he can write some excellent short fiction.

Best-known for his immense doorstoppers, Peter F. Hamilton is also an experienced writer of SF short stories. Manhattan in Reverse is his second collection of short fiction, collecting together seven stories published over the last eleven years. Unlike his first collection, A Second Chance at Eden, where the stories were all set in the same universe, this time around the fiction is not linked by any theme or setting.

First up is Watching Trees Grow, previously a stand-alone novella published by PS Publishing. The novella is a riff on one of Hamilton's favourite subgenres, the SF mystery thriller, this time set in an alternate history where the pace of technological development was much faster than in real life and there are electric cars on the streets of Oxford in the early 19th Century. A murder takes place and one man becomes obsessed with tracking down the killer...even if it takes centuries. An effective and clever story, riffing on traditional SF tropes about extended lifespans, alternate timelines and technological development.

Footvote is a political satire, in which a politician opens a wormhole to another planet, allowing people to escape from early 21st Century Britain to make a fresh start, but will only allow a narrow definition of people through, resulting in social unrest. One family is torn apart in the resulting chaos. It's an interesting story about escaping responsibility for your actions, but suffers from having some quite dated references already (Gordon Brown as British PM etc). There is a nice line in humour, though, with the constitution for the new planet (which bans traffic wardens from emigrating) apparently designed with Daily Mail readers in mind.

If at First can be seen as a bit of a dry run for a certain storyline in The Evolutionary Void. In this story a police detective finds himself pursuing a criminal and is inadvertently sent back in time to an earlier point in his own timeline. Given the chance to 'start again', he uses his immense knowledge of future events (and future hit pop songs) to build himself a fortune, only to forget his original purpose. It's a funny time travel story with a bleak, but not entirely undeserved, conclusion.

The Forever Kitten feels like Hamilton setting himself an impossible challenge: writing a story in just 1,000 words (or 1/450th the length of The Naked God) for a magazine article. He pulls it off, with a frankly disturbing finale that could bear revisiting in a longer story or novel.

The book is rounded off by three stories set in his Commonwealth setting: Blessed by an Angel is scene-setting stuff for the Void Trilogy, establishing the tensions between the Higher and Advancer cultures and also providing family backstory for a major character from that series. The Demon Trap is the best story in the collection, pitting Paula Myo against an opponent who goes to immense lengths to avoid capture, but who in the end cannot escape responsibility for his actions. Manhattan in Reverse again features Myo, this time investigating an anomalous series of events on a frontier planet flooded with refugees from the Starflyer War. It's effective and entertaining - Myo is rapidly becoming Hamilton's signature character and is one of the better-realised female protagonists of recent SF - but the ending is a little too neat.

Overall, this is an effective and varied collection, with Hamilton revisiting some established themes (longevity, the notion of political responsibility and time travel) and, intriguingly, exploring some ideas that would later come to fruition in the Commonwealth and Void novels. If the collection has a problem, it's that it's way too short: Hamilton has a significant number of pre-2000, non-Confederation short stories that did not appear in A Second Chance at Eden and I was hoping they'd be included here (including - fascinatingly - two collaborations with Graham Joyce and a Greg Mandel novella). Instead we only get seven stories, resulting in a hardcover that is only 260 pages long. Sure, the content is what matters and these seven stories are all at least interesting, but the missing of the opportunity to make the collection more extensive and exhaustive is somewhat frustrating.

But based on what does make it in, Manhattan in Reverse (****) is a solid enough collection of readable, clever and thought-provoking stories from an author who is as comfortable with the short form as he is the half-million-word mega-novel.

I will admit straight away that I love Peter Hamilton; I think the Epic Space Opera he creates is superb and I am always quick to try and pick up his books. So, when "Manhattan in Reverse" was released I made sure that it was right at the top of my reading pile. This is a collection of some of his short stories and as I haven't actually read any of his short stories before I was really looking forward to seeing what he could do in this format, especially considering he is an author who normally writes massive door stop style novels.

In regards to the stories, the first one called "Watching Trees Grow" is actually the longest. I found it rather interesting in that it traced a murder investigation across several centuries in an alternate version of Earth. Basically, in this world, the Romans never lost their empire and therefore technology continued to develop at a much faster pace than reality. As the years pass we follow the investigator utilise new technologies as they appear to ensure that the perpetrator of the murder is finally brought to justice.

The second story is "Footvote" which was quite a quick read, especially compared to the previous story, "Watching Trees Grow". It takes a slightly satirical look at the contemporary politics of the UK which did bring a little bit of a smile to my face at times. The story itself looks at how the Britain copes with a wormhole to a new planet being opened. The wormhole's creator has allowed a short period for people to immigrate and has implemented stringent regulations on who can and can't actually pass through. I did find it to be one of the more limited stories in the collection though, mainly due to the fact that the ending is based around a rather chance encounter. Either way though, out of everything in this collection, I think this is the story that I would most like to see expanded out into a full novel as there is a great basis here.

Following this we have "If at first..." which was probably my favorite story in the collection outside those that were based on the author's Commonwealth Universe. This is a rather amusing story in which we follow a Detective who accidentally ends up chasing a time traveler back in time, where he then tweaks history for his own benefit. Of course, this doesn't go as well as he hopes which leads on to an ending that I found to be rather clever and well fitted to the story.

"The Forever Kitten" is the forth story in the collection and it is incredibly short at only 1000 words long. It basically deals with the quest for 'forever youth' and involves a rather disturbing finale that I could see coming even though I hoped I would be wrong.

The next story in the collection is the first of those set in the Commonwealth Universe and it is a nice little story detailing some of the history of Inigo who was a character in the Void Trilogy. I would say that it doesn't really tell the reader much more than you would actually learn in the Void Trilogy but it was nice to see the Inigo's history fleshed out a little. It does still work as a standalone story but I think it is something that will really appeal more to those who have read the trilogy.

The final two stories in the collections follow another character from the Commonwealth Universe, namely Investigator Paula Myo who is the scourge of criminals everywhere. I will admit that I always found her to be an intriguing and enjoyable character to follow so these were probably the stories I was really looking forward to.

The first of these is "The Demon Trap" which is set prior to the events of "Pandora's Star" and follows Paula as she investigates the terrorist activities being conducted by a group trying to enable a planet to become Independent. The story really brings out how relentless Paula is in ensuring that justice is done and I really enjoyed the political intrigue that was brought out during the investigation. This was probably my favorite story in the entire collection, but this may have been biased by the fact that I am aware of aspects of Peter's other works which really enhance the enjoyment of this story.

The final story is "Manhattan in Reverse" which is a new story created for this collection and is set after the events of the Starflyer War in "Judas Unchained". However, I do not think having read the other books really makes any difference to this story as it is very standalone with only a few references to the other novels. In this story we follow Paula and she travels to another planet to investigate why a supposedly non sentient alien species has started attacking colonists. The story itself is rather enjoyable although I am not sure Paula really adds much to this story really and I think the real stars of the show are the alien creatures themselves.

Overall, I have to say that this is an enjoyable and varied collection of thought-provoking stories that showcase many of Hamilton's strengths and skill as an author. It does show that if he puts his mind to it he can create focused and intimate short stories that still capture some of the grand ideas he infuses into his larger novels. The one weakness is minor and it is that to really appreciate some of these stories you need to be aware of the other novels Hamilton has written. I think newcomers to his work probably won't gain the same level of enjoyment and interest from the stories as longer time fans may do. So, in conclusion I would say that any current fan of Peter Hamilton's works will probably love this collection, but there are probably better books for someone new to his writing to start with.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Pricing itself out of my market
I'll consider buying this when the Kindle price is less than the paperback. Even with the 20% VAT added to the paperback price it's not as high as this Kindle price. Read more

Published 15 days ago by T. Hengeveld

3.0 out of 5 stars A little disappointing.
Firstly, I should say that I am a fan, at least of Hamilton's space operas, less so the Mandel stories. Read more

Published 17 days ago by Robin Monks

2.0 out of 5 stars Review & Prices
Not his best work..quite boring in fact

To the previous reviewer about his comment on Amazon and prices. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Darren

1.0 out of 5 stars Kindle Rip-Off
Before you begin, this is not a review of the book but a winge at prices. I, like those who have posted before, am an avid Hamilton fan. Read more

Published 1 month ago by D. Carson

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent collection - although some will be familiar
Peter F Hamilton is one of my favourite writers. These short stories (although some are novella length) demonstrate his ability to set a scene and build an environment. Read more

Published 1 month ago by bob

1.0 out of 5 stars A surprisingly average book from a talented author
I've read every one of Hamilton's books with relish, but was astonished at the crude dialogue and dull plots within this collection of short stories. Read more

Published 3 months ago by Jeremy Ward

4.0 out of 5 stars nice
first short story collection of mr hamilton's that i've read.
enjoyed it.
some of the stories are truly 'short' but no less effective because of their length. Read more

Published 3 months ago by C. Reilly

4.0 out of 5 stars Not as impressive as his novels
As a fan of the Commonwealth Series and the Void Trilogy, I was eager to grab an early edition of Manhattan in Reverse to quench my thirst for Hamilton's style of science fiction-... Read more

Published 4 months ago by M-I-K-E 2theD

4.0 out of 5 stars Cracking Sci-Fi Shorts
I love short stories as it's something that you can quite easily dip into on journeys or lunch breaks or a brief time of peace and quiet without worrying about forgetting what's... Read more

Published 4 months ago by Gareth Wilson - Falcata Times Blog

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